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Facebook bans painted mother-to-be by artist Matt Huntley

Facebook bans photo of painted mother-to-be

When I first saw the incredible image of a pregnant mother’s body painted beautifully with sunflowers, my first thought was whether or not the paints were safe for pregnancy. Anything you put on your skin gets absorbed into the bloodstream and across the placenta. I did not think of this as a photo of a nude or cause for any sort of discretion. In fact, I thought it was quite beautiful!

Matt Huntley’s troubles started with a warning. The Northeast Portland body-painting artist started receiving emails from Facebook on Monday afternoon that photos of his models violated the site’s community standards. He was given an opportunity to take down his Facebook fan page Tuesday morning, he said, but when he declined the offer, it was taken down for him.

Body-painting artists have run into trouble as well. The art of painting nude bodies, often to mimic clothing, is frowned upon because while breasts and nipples are covered, their outline is usually visible.

At first glance, you can’t even tell the mother-to-be is naked, as her body is so covered in paint. It is no different than wearing a tight fitting shirt, and I have seen some seriously slutty pictures on Facebook (even profile photos) that are far more offensive.

This is a sweet photo. It embraces all that motherhood is…there is lightning representing the storm to come at times, there’s the mother’s hands embracing her womb offering protection, there are the beautiful sunflowers representing life and reincarnation by their repetition…this is what I see. I don’t see nudity or pornography.

The gray area lies within the “nudity and pornography” section of Facebook’s community standards. The policy states that, aside from pornographic images “we also impose limitations on the display of nudity,” however, “we aspire to respect people’s right to share content of personal importance, whether those are photos of a sculpture like Michelangelo’s David or family photos of a child breastfeeding.”

I do use Facebook. I am on it a lot connecting with old friends and discovering many great inspirational things about the world we live in from posts people share. I would count Huntley’s work as one of those things!

I don’t want to inadvertently see pornography when I am on Facebook, but I am not for such extreme censorship. It does not help to change our view of the naked body, especially the female name body, as beauty and not an object of sex. Facebook should leave breastfeeding mothers and mothers-to-be alone!

Comments

Well… I would say that I have seen terrible photos on facebook. As I wrote to facebook about that, they answered that the contents were safe (?). I guess there are few bias there: a nude teenager is safe but a painted pregnant woman not?